Plant · P-062

Huisache

Vachellia farnesiana

Huisache is a thorny legume whose flowers are distilled into cassie oil, a genuine ingredient in European perfumery, and whose gum is rated above gum arabic for artists' colors. Goats, sheep and camels relish its pods and leaves as browse, though cattle mostly refuse it and its tannin content caps how much of a diet it can safely make up. It blooms January through April with buds easily lost to a hard frost, which matters because the perfume crop is the main value of growing it. Despite being native across its range, it spreads so readily by livestock- and wildlife-carried seed that extension services run active brush-clearing programs against it, and its mature seeds carry a toxic alkaloid once used to kill rabid dogs, so only the young green pods are safe to eat.